Staff Member

Unless I'm missing something: nothing in the article suggested that Apple might now, or in the future, ship macOS with ZFS.

Click to expand...

Agreed, Apple has moved on from ZFS, hence my comment its dead.

Quote

For Mac users, there's the third party solution.

Click to expand...

For the majority of consumers, there's absolutely no need and low demand for a third party file system. its basically a solution looking for a problem.

Not even the ZFS engineers from Apple could make a compelling case to use ZFS, as their company failed to make any money and was bought out by Greenbytes.

Quote

PC-BSD began booting from ZFS around five years ago. Integral support for ZFS began some time before that, I don't know when.

Click to expand...

Yup, and maybe 2016 will be the year of linux desktop

Consumers are not by and large using Linux, never mind ZFS. Sure there are hobbiests and pockets of usage. I'm not knocking Linux, I've used it before, but for general consumer usage, Linux is not on the short list for people. Nor is a third party file system. Most people just don't care enough to worry about whether they're running NTFS, ext4, HFS+. They're more interested in their data and using the computer.

APFS is expected to do some things that ZFS can not, ZFS does some things that APFS can not or will not. I would not describe ZFS as dead for consumers.

Click to expand...

There's a very long list of file systems that have been used over the decades, the vast majority of which have been proprietary. Whether it's political/NIH/licensing cost, or whether it's a matter of delivering a file system tailored to the hardware/software environment it's intended to serve... Apple hardly deviated from longstanding, industry-wide practices by rolling its own.

ZFS was never "alive" for consumers, presuming you define consumers as PC/mobile device end-users. It came tantalizingly close to becoming such, for a little while. It probably made more sense for Apple to pursue it back when they were in the server business, but that ship has also sailed.

I guess ZFS keeps coming up in discussions here because of that brief flirtation with Apple. However, the question could just as easily be, "Why not Btrfs?" It seems to share many of ZFS' attributes. But in the end, I don't think either ZFS or Btrfs do everything that APFS will do (just as APFS may not do everything those do). Why license something you may need to modify/extend, why carry code for capabilities you don't want/need to support? That's fundamental to the concept of product differentiation.

iPhone with ZFS was relatively well known. I never saw Mac OS X booted from ZFS, but I know that it was done years ago. High-level discussions in 2010 – a surprise to me, it was nice to learn of it from someone so well-respected. Then there's my wee bit of history, but I shouldn't describe that as tantalising … it was/is more of a practicality.

APFS

I'll have more for that topic after I test fsck_apfs … looking forward to hearing reading Leventhal's thoughts on that.

(There's a more recent history, not known to the public, but I'll never disclose the details.)

Click to expand...

If what you are saying is true, someone will release this information. So you are only delaying the inevatable. Either you don't want us to ahve the full information or you will get into trouble if you do release it. So which is it?

… someone will release this information. So you are only delaying the inevatable. Either you don't want us to ahve the full information or you will get into trouble if you do release it. So which is it?

Click to expand...

It's not really either of those two things; not so simple. Neither should you expect anyone to publish the information.

MacRumors attracts a broad audience
of both consumers and professionals interested in
the latest technologies and products. We also boast an active community focused on
purchasing decisions and technical aspects of the iPhone, iPod, iPad, and Mac platforms.